Susan Pullium, one of the senior staffers in the Wake Count school system's student assignment office, has become at least the seventh person from the school district hired by the state Department of Transportation.

State Transportation Secretary Tony Tata announced today that Pullium will be the DOT's director of strategic planning. Pulliam will oversee the Transportation Planning Branch and Performance Metrics Management Office as she works on developing a 25-year transportation infrastructure plan.

“Susan has overseen large-scale planning and community engagement efforts and understands the importance of collaboration,” said Tata, the former Wake school superintendent, in the press release. “She is a talented, innovative individual who will be a tremendous asset as we work with our business and community partners to develop a long-range transportation plan that boosts North Carolina’s economy.”

Transportation Secretary Tony Tata announced Monday that Susan Pullium, a student assignment administrator for the Wake County schools, will join him and at least six other former Wake school employees at NCDOT.

Pullium will become NCDOT's strategic planning director. She will work with Nick Tennyson, a former Durham mayor picked for a new position as NCDOT chief deputy secretary for support, on developing the state's long-range transportation infrastructure plan. She will be paid a salary of $88,084. At Wake schools, where Tata had worked as school superintendent for 20 months, Pullium served on a student assignment task force.

“Susan has overseen large-scale planning and community engagement efforts and understands the importance of collaboration,” Tata said in a news release. “She is a talented, innovative individual who will be a tremendous asset as we work with our business and community partners to develop a long-range transportation plan that boosts North Carolina’s economy.”

The difference between a guarantee and a priority could be a big deal for Wake County families who apply for magnet schools or during the first transfer application period next year.

Based on last week's discussion, staff has placed in both the magnet and selection criteria a priority for applicants who are not in an entry grade to go to the same school as a sibling. This came after board member Susan Evans asked about adding this kind of priority.

There's also now officially a transfer priority that fleshes out wording in the draft assignment plan about dealing with requests from rising 6th- and 9th-graders for feeders from the choice plan.

This month's Wake County school board discussion on the draft 2013-14 student assignment plan shows both the advantages and disadvantages of the district's multi-track year-round calendar.

On one hand, the multi-track calendar is helping Brier Creek Elementary School in northwest Raleigh keep up with growth as the only school in the area. On the other hand, the multi-track calendar was negatively impacting Eastern Wake schools, leading to staff recommending that three schools switch to a single-track calendar for next year.

During the Nov. 13 board work session, board member Deborah Prickett said that at her last board advisory council meeting some parents had asked about switching Brier Creek to a traditional calendar or single-track year-round school.

Was the Wake County school board's decision to only extend the dissolution of first-choice wait lists to July 18 the right call?

Some school board members talked last week about extending the deadline even further for all students, or least for those in high schools. But staff cited the need to lock in a date for schools to have their enrollment figures and to be fair to newcomers who will be moving in over the summer.

The waiting lists were going to expire on June 29. But after parents lobbied for more time to get into their first-choice school, the board told staff to look at a later date.

Conflicting views on the feeder patterns could determine just how stable they'll be for families moving forward in Wake County's new student assignment plan.

During Tuesday's school board meeting, Democratic board members were skeptical about being able to guarantee that families could have a feeder pattern locked in for 13 years. Board members said it's more realistic to talk about guaranteeing stability for students once they're in a school,

But Republican board members and staff said that 13 years of feeder stability is possible.

How hard will it be for Wake County's new choice-based student assignment plan to fill new schools, especially ones opening in modular campuses?

As noted in this Dec. 23 North Raleigh News article by Chelsea Kellner, Wake school officials don't anticipate it being a problem. But others aren't as certain.

For instance, will parents choose the new Abbots Creek Elementary opening this summer at the modular campus next to East Millbrook Middle School? How likely are they to choose Abbots Creek considering that funding for the permanent location, adjacent to the North Wake Landfill, is from a bond issue that hasn't been scheduled yet?

The issues of stability and base assignment came up during Friday's presentation of Wake County's new student assignment plan to the Raleigh Regional Association of Realtors.

As noted in today's article, school administrators touted how the new plan will allow real estate agents to assure families that they will no longer have to worry about student reassignment. But the real-estate agents were concerned about how the loss of base assignments would impact their ability to sell homes.

“This is a hard reset and mental adjustment to make,” said Susan Pullium, a member of Wake’s student assignment task force. “There’s no longer base assignments.”

Just how much impact will the ability to apply to high-performing schools (formerly called achievement-choice schools) have on Wake County's new student assignment plan?

As noted in today's article, members of the student assignment task force promoted to the audience Wednesday how every family would have access to high quality schools via the high-performing school choices.

But Susan Pullium also said a number of times that no decision has been yet whether firm set asides need to be established for the high-performing schools. This comes after talk about using as much as a 20 percent set aside drew complaints from people such as school board chairman Ron Margiotta.

Could the development of feeder patterns be more of a hold-up on the new Wake County student assignment plan than coming to an agreement on achievement-choice schools?

As noted in today's article, staff's update on the student assignment plan included discussion on achievement schools and a presentation on sample feeder patterns. During the meeting, board members said zilch on the achievement schools but went into detail on the feeder patterns.

"We know this is contentious," Superintendent Tony Tata said to board members in response to the feeder pattern concerns. "This is high stakes. We want your feedback to make this right."